Rhoads on his gear: “I have a pedalboard and in it there’s a Distortion Plus, a 10-band equalizer – they’re all MXR, by the way – a chorus, stereo chorus, Cry Baby wah pedal and, umm, a Roland volume pedal. I used to use them all a lot more, but now our sound man is starting to add a lot more up front, so I don’t really use them all as much as I used to. Just sometimes. I use them more for quiet rhythm parts just to enhance the sound. I don’t really use any echoes or anything for leads, ever....”
Rhoads on speakers: "Yeah, see, if you play and you use Marshalls..I had to change the speakers over to Altecs (Altec Lansing 417 8-Hs,) Cause they’re a very bright, clean speaker. Yeah, because the celestions are really dirty anyway and if you start adding a fuzzbox to them, it’ll sound terrible.But I, uh..I like that added treble and dirt to it...."
Rhoads on Tremolos: "Well, the main flying V is the white one, if you’re seeing..is a Charvel. It says Jackson. Everybody thinks, “What’s a Jackson?”, but Grover Jackson owns Charvel and he builds them himself for me. And, um, I use his tremolo units. I, I think they’re very good. Um, other than a Floyd Rose, there’s no perfect tremolo, but his are very good and he’s just about to release a brand new one he invented that’s supposed to be equal to a trem..uh, Floyd Rose. But it works with ball bearings and as, he’s just doing a prototype and he’s doing a guitar for me now and it’ll be the first to use it. So real soon I’ll start experimenting with it.
Uh, I have another flying V with the…it’s polka dotted. That isn’t a Charvel and I do have tuning problems with that one, all the time...."
Interview at Music City - Greenburg, PA - February 2, 1982